But after an increase in religious conservatism in recent decades – the key opposition group is now the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood that promotes sharia- bare-headed women have become a small minority …

These days about 80% of women wear the veil in Egypt, but I doubt they all do it for religious reasons. Which is possibly why women only beaches are doing a good trade in Egypt.

Places like “La Femme” in the posh resort of Marina, which charge $US16 a day for the privilege for women to remove their veils and swim or lounge about in skimpy bikinis, seem quite popular.

The founder of one of the other women only resorts told reporters:

“We need to respond to the needs of the community.”

I’m not sure what this story, and the women only beaches, really says about the ‘the community’? Are they responding to the wider community that wants women to be veiled, but giving those women an opportunity to ‘get their kit off’ in private. Or, are they responding to the women who don’t really want to wear the veil but have no choice because of draconian laws brought in by a sharia based government opposition?

What evidence do you have of subjugation? How do you know that Egyptian women aren’t choosing to wear the veil, jilbab, burka or other?

I could easily point to China and say that its problems flow from its secularism and repression of religion. But I don’t think atheism is the problem just as I don’t think Islam is the problem. It’s how narrow-minded people choose to act that creates problems.http://asad123.wordpress.com

I think you would have a hard time linking secularism to the creation of problems anywhere. In China’s case, most would spring from communism, which actually has doctrine.
It’s a different point in Islam, which in some interpretations demands the wearing of certain items of clothing. They may be narrow-minded people at the top, but they’re still weilding it to fulfil their own wishes.